First of all…I’m not going to bullshit you and say you should be advertising. Every business is different. I’ll discuss some of issues and opportunities we’ve come across since the start of this pandemic. You can decide what to do with it.

Display and Video Inventory:
Display and Video traffic across YouTube, the Google Display Network and the Top 4-5 DSP’s is roughly 40% cheaper right now. The pullback in ad dollars last month has left an abundance of available inventory. As a result, CPM’s have decreased significantly.

Is that good for advertisers? Isn’t buying 40% more volume for the same dollar a good thing? We think so….if done correctly. 
I guess it depends on your business too. If you could purchase 40% more inventory right now for your dollar, what would you do?  Would you change your messaging? Focus on branding? Grow your top of funnel remarketing audiences?  

Desktop Volume is Up
With an abundance of people working from home, we’ve seen a 20% increase in desktop volume since March 15^th. We’ve switched a lot of our programmatic inventory to desktop, and have utilized bid factors on some of the more prominent desktop ad units. (970×250, 300×600). Of course, this varies from client to client, but many of our clients have been able to reach more of those high quality desktop eyeballs. Especially B2B clients.

Social Media Volume is Through the Roof
I’m not a stockbroker….but I may purchase some Facebook stock this week. FB and Instagram are doing 5x the volume during this pandemic, and despite advertiser pullback, inventory remains filled and rates have remained the same.

But how’s the quality???
It depends on your business. I know I’m taking the easy answer….but it’s true. We have clients that are doing better than ever right now, but for the most part, we have re-allocated high percentages of social media budgets towards heavily discounted programmatic desktop and Connected TV inventory.

Search
Search volume is down. (it’s up in some industries ), but it’s down in total. We’ve recommended to most of our clients; if possible….to maintain a search presence. CPCs are down and search visitors are the highest quality visitors you can ask for. This gives you a primo audience to retarget to….when things get back to normal.

Connected TV (CTV)
We purchase CTV ads directly through our programmatic DSP. With everyone at home, and seemingly nothing to ever watch on cable TV….streaming tv is at an all-time high.
Imagine someone coming to your website and you being able to retarget them on their Smart TV. This is a medium that is still under-utilized by advertisers, and right now is the perfect time to try it out. CTV is booming as we speak, and if you are not capitalizing on it, you are missing out.

Sure, Cable TV is still huge, but it’s getting smaller every single day. This pandemic is only going to expedite the transition from cable to streaming tv. From an advertisers perspective, CTV is far superior than traditional TV advertising. Audience targeting, remarketing, frequency capping, ad sequencing, view-through conversion tracking….Do I need to continue?